Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-31T13:20:54.348Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

CORONA Satellite Photography and Ancient Road Networks: A Northern Mesopotamian Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Jason Ur
Jason Ur*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St., Chicago, IL 60637. (j-ur@uchicago.edu)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Middle-eastern archaeologists are winning new information from declassified military photographs taken 25 years ago. This study shows how pictures of north-eastern Syria are revealing the routeways, and by inference the agricultural systems of Mesopotamia in the early Bronze Age.

Keywords

satellite photographyCORONAEarly Bronze AgeMesopotamiarouteways

Information

Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 77 , Issue 295 , March 2003 , pp. 102 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2003

References

Courty, M. A. 1994. Le cadre paléogéographique des occupations humaines dans le bassin du Haut-Khabur (Syrie du nord-est). Premiers résultats, Paléorient 20/1: 21–59.Google Scholar
Day, D., Logsdon, J., & Latell, B. (eds.). 1998. Eye in the sky: the story of the CORONA spy satellites. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Eidem, J., Finkel, I. & Bonechi, M.. 2001. The third millennium inscriptions, in Oates, D. et al. 2001: 99–120.Google Scholar
Hole, F. 1991. Middle Khabur settlement and agriculture in the Ninevite 5 period, Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 21: 1729.Google Scholar
Kennedy, D. 1998. Declassified satellite photographs and archaeology in the Middle East: case studies from Turkey, Antiquity 72: 553–61 Google Scholar
Kouchoukos, N. 1998. Landscape and social change in late prehistoric Mesopotamia. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Yale University.Google Scholar
Kouchoukos, N. 2002. Satellite images and Near Eastern landscapes, Near Eastern Archaeology 64: 80–91.Google Scholar
Mcclellan, T. & Porter, A.. 1995. Jawa and North Syria, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 5: 49–65.Google Scholar
Mcclellan, T., Grayson, R. & C. Ogleby. 2000. Bronze age water harvesting in North Syria, in Rouault, O. & Wafler, M. (eds.), La Djéziré et l’Euphrate Syriens de la protohistoire à la fin du He millénaire: 137–55. BREPOLS.Google Scholar
Oates, D., Oates, J. & Mcdonald, H.. 2001. Excavations at Tell Brak 2: Nagar in the third millennium BC. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Philip, G., Donoghue, D., Beck, A., & N. Galiatsatos. 2002. CORONA satellite photography: an archaeological application from the Middle East, Antiquity 76: 109–18.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. 1979. Roads and tracks of Britain. London: Dent Google Scholar
Tsoar, H. & Yekutieli, Y.. 1993. Geomorphological identification of ancient roads and paths on the loess of the northern Negev, Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 41: 209–16.Google Scholar
Ur, J. 2002. settlement and landscape in Northern Mesopotamia: the Tell Hamoukar Survey 1999–2001, Akkadica 123: 57–88.Google Scholar
Van Liere, W. J. 1963. Capitals and citadels of Bronze- Iron Age Syria in their relationship to land and water, Les Annales Archéologiques de Syrie 13: 109–22 Google Scholar
Van Liere, W. J. & Lauffray, J.. 1954–55. Nouvelle prospection archéologique dans la haute Jezireh syrienne, Les Annales Archéologiques de Syrie 4–5: 129–48.Google Scholar
Weiss, H. 1986. The origins of Tell Leilan and the conquest of space in third millennium Mesopotamia, in Weiss, H. (ed.), The origins of cities in dry-farming. Syria and Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC: 71–108. Guildford: Four Quarters.Google Scholar
Weiss, H. 1997. Leilan, , in Weiss, H. (ed.), Archaeology in Syria, American Journal of Archaeology 101: 126–29.Google Scholar
Weiss, H. & Courty, M.A. 1994. Comment to Wilkinson 1994, Current Anthropology 35: 512–14.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, T. J. 1993. Linear hollows in the Jazira, Upper Mesopotamia, Antiquity 67: 548–62.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, T. J. 1994. The structure and dynamics of dry-farming states in Upper Mesopotamia, Current Anthropology 35: 483–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilkinson, T. J. 2000. Archaeological survey of the Tell Beydar region, Syria, 1997. A preliminary report, in Van Lerberghe, K. & Voet, G. (eds.), Tell Beydar. Environmental and technical studies: 1–37. Turnhaut: BREPOLS.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, T.J., French, C. A. I., Matthews, W., & Oates, J.. 2001. Geoarchaeology, landscape and the region, in Oates, D. et al. 2001: 1–14.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, T. J. & Tucker, D.. 1995. Settlement development in the North Jazira, Iraq. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.Google Scholar